Staff Sergeant John A. Tarbert

In late 1944, Tarbert was assigned to the 703rd Bombardment Squadron, 445th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 8th AirForce in the European Theater. On Sept.27, Tarbert, a waist gunner onboard the B-24J Liberator Mairzy Doats, was killed in action when his plane was hit by heavy anti-aircraft fire over Bassenheim, Germany. None of the six surviving crewmembers reported seeing Tarbert successfully bail out of the crashing plane, which landed in a local hill called Karmelenberg near the towns of Ochtendung and Bassenheim, Germany. After the war, there was no record of the missing crewmembers being taken as POWs by German forces. The three crewmembers, including Tarbert, remained unaccounted for following the war.

In February 1946, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, recovered unidentified remains recovered from the Bassenheim Cemetery. These remains, X-2360 Margraten (X-2360), were reportedly removed from an aircraft crash by villagers after a crash in late Sept. 1944. Later, in 1951, a team visited the crash site and recovered remains from the crater, designated X-9048 Liege (X-9048). At the time, an identification of X-2360was made for the missing Mairzy Doats tail gunner. Identification of the other remains was not possible, and they were transferred to what is now the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial, Carthage, Tunisia. DPAA historians determined a strong possible connection between X-9048 and Tarbert was possible. In Sept. 2022, Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission personnel, exhumed X-9048 from the North African American Cemetery and transferred them to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis and identification. Also in Sept. 2022, DPAA sent an investigation team, which included Army Geospatial Center personnel, to investigate a crash site outside Bassenheim believed to be that of Mairzy Doats. Remains recovered from the crash site were sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis and identification. To identify Tarbert’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR) and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis.